All Quiet On The Martian Front, getting the game to work at last.

Club night again, the last for the year and pizza was provided with the extra funds we build throughout the year.

It was a small night with no 40K but Magic the Gathering made an appearance but I failed to do the photo shoot.

X-Wing 1st edition and Wings of Glory had a run on the table but you will note a nice bit of Christmas cheer on the WOG table.

Clubs a pretty clever in that just because the rules change as the company needs to stay afloat it does not mean there are people that wont play the old edition. X-Wing is a case in point and our club played 5th edition of 40K until the new 8th edition picked up the quality and turned it back to a good game.

Now a game we have had a bash at on 3-4 separate occasions was All Quiet on the Martian Front. This time around the martians from Mars have invaded America in the years just prior to WWI. Some nifty steam tanks and good old US manufacturing technology means that the martians wont have it easy. Or that was the initial story line and hope. But alas when we battled away over separate games with different players we always had the martians winning by a long long way. To play the humans was accepting defeat from the first throw of the dice. tonight it was different. We used the rules properly with ambush ability for the humans, command tokens to keep fleeing units on the table and I saw how wittling away at the Tripods was going to knock them out. So the humans won tonight, a much tighter game. Was it due to two human players versus the one martian or was it actually using the rules properly? I think the latter but it did help having two brains to work on the one task.

We played it at around 1400points and as the game was in 15mm I decided to bring on His Majesties own Royal Gloucester Fusiliers. A purely fictitious force of infantry and advisors that had the core elements and commanders still in it from the first Martian Invasion from the late 1800s. See if you can spot them on the table.

pic time

Evil Martians capable of who knows what?

Setting out the human forces

Small American town with odd British allies assisting.

Mark II tanks, nice paint job but not mush chop, the Mark III are much better.

WOG at Christmas

Yes you see correctly, first exchange of fire and Snoopy and the Red Baron knock each other out of the sky.

Such a fun game and when played on the smaller table it is so fast and furious.

See you in January

The End of November sees the club moving along down the Sci-fi alley.

This blog is a bit of a show and tell of club happenings. I always plan on putting more on the blog to promote the club, alas I get involved in real life and the blog takes a back seat. Next year will be better.............one hopes.

The benefit of a small club is the diversity of opinion and choice. 40K has made a real resurgence so much so that I introduced it to the school I am at, but have not played a game at the club itsself. I had to have a new army of course and the cheap beginners boxed sets started my Death Guard force. Great minis as usual from GW but I have not really been into the rot and gore of this most loathsome of the Chaos gods. The kids at school wanted to play marines so I had to be the bad guy, cool. Soon my pretties will make it to the club soon. (maybe pretties is not the right word)

So Age of Sigmar killed off warhammer fantasy in its old form but our club jumped on to Kings of War and the toys still make it to the table for the regular bout of dice throwing. Some of the chaps do play AoS but again it has not surfaced at the club.

Infinity is still a goer and a great game. We tried a bigger table at the End of November games night. 3 sides with 300 points and used the TACO2 system again with some success. Bigger tables really mean more turns I feel but we ran out of time to really give it a proper run. Maybe back to a 4 foot by 4 foot table and 200 points a side.

Wings of Glory is still a staple as Barry not only loves the game but has enough models for the whole club to play if we wanted to.

So enough blather and a quick picture show.

Kings of War ( a fond replacement for WFB )

Baz and the Wings Game from early November

Infinity from early November, hmmm a few cans of spray paint and this will look beyond awesome.

End of November big Infinity game

Another view of the larger than normal table

My Haqqislam, purchased second hand with a view to repaint until I realised I have only one lifetime to paint and play games with and to be honest they are well painted anyway!

Yu Jing a mix of my minis and second hand painted again but controlled by a friend on the night

Mordheim, a venerable favorite that stands the test of time

Nicely painted Necron walker

Destroyers?? this table looks so good with models on it.

Even unpainted minis look great against this mat and the buildings

My Death Guard begin

More nasties to beat the school kids into submission

Owned this for 25+ years sat 3/4 painted for 3 years and a last done, I love the old Mithril Miniatures.

The reason I am having a go at Haqqislam in Infinity, a lovely Odalisqque from the game with the brilliant spitfire gun. oh I painted this one and was quite chuffed how it turned out.

We have one more games night in December as the other night will be too close to Christmas, so if you are around drop in. There will be Pizza too.

Happenings at the club and a few photos from WinterCon 2017 Canberra

This will be more of a photo dump as it would seem that it is to hard to use the iPad as a blog writer, at least for Blogger. Club has been up and down with mixed games some old some new being played.

Infinity

WWII

Lots of TAGs in an Infinity game

40K in July

Infinity training game

WinterCon nice Boltaction army 01

WinterCon nice Boltaction army 02

WinterCon nice Boltaction army 03

WinterCon nice Boltaction army 04

WinterCon nice Boltaction army 05

40K ork army from WinterCon loved it

Details of the 40K ork army from WinterCon

Details of the 40K ork army from WinterCon

Really was clever

My Tohaa TAG for Infinity

One of our female painters Father Knight, it was very very good.

Another Training table for Infinity

Open Combat a new game for our club

More Open Combat

Fast and furious games in 40 mins or so in Open Combat

Bugbears won.

All quiet on the martian front and all the usual down at the club

Well we got to try out All Quiet on the Martian Front, for a second time. I like the system very much, elegant in its simplicity but all too easy to forget rules again. No fault of the rules, just fading brains filled with too many other sets. But more details to follow.

Well we messed up the rules, humans in cover get a few advantages, in our game the black dust launcher caused a lot of damage as they got, you guessed it no advantage.

Each game I have played saw the Aliens lose a tripod nice and early and this sends a chill down your......spineless cephalo thorax????

Gotta love the tanks, steam powered WWI or earlier prototypes.

The Aliens win. Not much left of the human force from 1800 points. But I think we are missing something with the humans it seemed to easy in both games to win as the Aliens. Must read the rules a little better me thinks.

Baz's Kill the Strachen bomber....game 1 London 1 and Germany 0

Kill the Strachen game 2 London 2 Germany 0 sounds like a football match.

Usual X-wing and seemed a good close game. My Empire ships got blown from the sky yet again even though I was not in command.

This last item is a little highlight from my time at Cancon Earlier this year. I had the chance to play in the Infinity tournament and had a ball needless to say. All my opponents were great and most had brilliantly painted miniatures. I did not get to play against Greg Milsop the owner of the above minis alas. But I want you to look carefully at the minis to the left and right of the big TAG in the middle. Yep they are clear......he molds and then casts them in clear resin to act as his units that are in TO camo. TO camo is basically invisible.......who would have guessed. I hope Corvus Belli the manufacturers of Infinity do something similar. I'd buy them.